


A Good Day

by MissAtomicBomb77



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 10:11:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1343701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAtomicBomb77/pseuds/MissAtomicBomb77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple working through a divorce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Day

Charlie opens his apartment door.

“You didn’t have to send a car.” Nancy says in lieu of a greeting. She’s in the hallway, hugging a large manila envelope to her chest. Not as if it was going to provide protection or needed to be protected. It just needed to be here.

“I wanted to,” he tells her as he steps aside to let her into his midtown apartment. 

She’s been to his sparse apartment before, a few times, actually. She came for the first few days and stayed with him, helping him unpack and deal with the pesky little things that come with moving, reestablishing cable and internet, helping unpack the few things he needed for the kitchen. It didn’t take very long, but they made it take some time. Living apart was nothing new to them; they had done it a few times before, dictated by work. This time was different and they both knew it. 

The last time was in early February when she decided that she wanted to sell the home and learned about how Charlie was taking steps to move on. It had been a pivotal night for them. Not unwarranted, not unexpected in the sense that it needed to happen. If you had caught Nancy in a weaker moment, she would admit that the speed of change is what hurts the most. Not that night, because time, well, time is finite and there are no excuses to be had for waiting around. The small minded might have said that that they both deserve happiness. She would shake her head and simply say that he deserved closure and if happiness was to be included, so be it.

She finds her way to the small dining table and takes a seat, relinquishing her envelope to the smooth surface. 

He doesn’t ask as he brings two coffee mugs to the table, the coffee finished brewing only a few minutes ago. Black, robust and hot as lava has always been the way they preferred their coffee even though there were countless times they did without one or all three of the requirements. She fishes in her purse now for her glasses and he gets his out of his pocket once he’s seated. 

Charlie takes a drink of his coffee now as she pulls out the stack of paper she brought with her. The first in the stack being about the Connecticut home, nothing they haven’t already discussed, but she has more details now. “We close at the end of the month and the final price was nine hundred thirty five thousand.”

“That much?” he asks as he takes the paper from her. 

“I didn’t ask about the motivations,” she admits. “All I know that it’s going to a young family, three young children, and the husband is in securities.” She pauses. “The house deserves children.” Another moment before she proceeds. “That’s the breakdown of the fees associated with the sale and the establishment of the trust as you wanted. We close at the end of next week. I’ve already spoken with your attorney and he’s prepared to be there to sign on your behalf.” 

Charlie reads the paper and slowly nods as he finishes. “This is good.”

“You know I don’t want the money.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to listen to my argument on why I don’t want or need it?”

“No.” Charlie tells her, looking her square in the eye as he said it.

“Okay,” she moves back to her stacks of paper. “Here’s the current list of marital assets, with the obvious ones assigned to each other. I wanted to hear from you one more time on what you want to do with the joint investments.”

“I’ve already told you. They’re yours.”

“Charlie,” she pleads. She’s quiet for an iota too long, biting back on the words that she wants to say and finding a suitable replacement for them. “What if something happens and you’re forced to start over. Yes, you’re working now and you have money coming in, but what about retirement?”

He just shakes his head. He’s never going to retire because if he doesn’t have anything else, working will be the only thing he will have. Charlie’s decided that they’re going to have to wheel his corpse out of the AWM building. He doesn’t say this either. The subtext between them is really quite simple: what would he do should the light of Leona Lansing fail to shine on him anymore? “I still have some options on the table Nan. Please. I have enough to slink off into the sunset if needed.”

She relents. “Okay, alright.” She moves to the next stack. “Here are the new insurance policies naming our daughter as sole beneficiary for both of us. Break out your pen Charlie. We need to literally sign our lives away.” A small symphony begins of papers sliding and signatures added between them. She double checks everything, part analyst, part mother.

When they’ve finished, they’re quiet as they enjoy their coffee. 

“So,” he asks her. “What are you going to do with the rest of the day?”

She shrugs. “I hadn’t really thought about it. Go home, I guess. I finally started tackling the library. I’m sure I’ll have to ship you some boxes. Thought about having a yard sale, but those are so much work and I doubt Sophie can come help me for another weekend, she’s been at the house so many times in the last few months.” 

He makes no offer to help. Even when things were well between them, yard sales were always a source of contention, she being of the mindset to get rid of things and he, well, more than once had he rescued things from being sold. Letting her cart it off to Goodwill was more than acceptable at this point. She’s always been fiercely independent and she would know that she would view his offer for help as nothing more than interference on his part. 

The hardest part for him, he’s decided is less that he’s losing his wife, but as if he’s losing a friend. She was one of the only people that have been with him during some of the most difficult times of his life. They could always just talk and that was the basis of their relationship. They were friends and colleagues long before they were lovers, long before they were husband and wife. Perhaps it was a sense of guilt of losing a friend that catches him at that moment. “Spend the day with me,” he says simply. “Let’s walk in Central Park and go from there? Just you and me, and well, my security guard.”

Nancy looks at him over the cup of coffee. She can’t help but smile. “Yeah, okay.”

He smiles back.

 

Matthew Cruz, the head of AWM Security and personal security to Leona Lansing and whomever Leona Lansing deems needs it, is his guard today. Charlie is startled to learn that Nancy and Matthew had met. “He came to see me shortly after Thanksgiving last year. There had been some concerns and he offered me the world.” She tells Charlie on the car ride to Central Park.

“I didn’t know this,” he tells her. 

“Because I didn’t take anything that was offered except his business card, as for everything else, I didn’t believe it was warranted.”

His hand finds hers. “It was… complicated. It still is.”

“I know,” she says softly. “I know.”

Belvedere Castle had always been a favorite spot of theirs. Nancy and Sophie lived in Connecticut full-time before Sophie had gone on to school. They would come to the city every now and then, on days that Sophie didn’t have school or there was an event Charlie could bring them to. Even more recently, when Sophie was at Amherst, she would come see him on her own and now that she was at Emerson, while the trips were less frequent and her last visit a disaster, they would manage time to come to Belvedere Castle. 

Sophie is foremost in their thoughts as they admire the little oddity of the castle in the heart of Central Park. She declared more than once that she was going to be married there. They declarations had ceased in audibility but her parents were sure that the wish remained. “It didn’t go well,” he tells Nancy as they admire the unrivaled view of the Park and the city.

“I know it didn’t. Don’t think you were the only one that felt the cold wind and the blowback of the ocean on that.”

He turns to look at her. “What for?”

“For not being angry at you,” She shrugs her shoulders and continues to look out at the view.

Charlie snorts a little and looks back at the city. “You’re allowed to be angry with me.”

“I think the two of you believe that anger should be expressed in a fantastic fashion. That’s how I know that she’s your daughter. I think she wanted me to be a sobbing mess on the floor and I just simply told her that it’s not like that for me.”

“What is it like?” he asks softly.

“Eh,” she replies. “It’s hard to explain Charlie. We’re both adults. We’ve both made mistakes. If I said I felt nothing, it would be heartless and I’d be a liar. I’ve lost a husband, yes. People go their whole lives without a husband or a wife. Many people choose not to have a title like that thrust upon them. The title doesn’t dictate who I am and who I chose to be Charlie. I fundamentally have not changed. You haven’t changed. I just don’t think she understands we know who we are. She’s never known us apart, or as friends or as reporters, she hasn’t known us as people, only parents. We’ve challenged her perceptions and she has to decide if she can accept who we are over what she wants to believe we are.”

They’re quiet for a few moments as they look at the view. Nancy moves away first and Charlie follows closely behind. They find themselves on a familiar path known as the Ramble, a path nearby that offers views of true wildlife that can’t be seen on the streets of New York. He wraps his arm around hers, a familiar gesture, and their trench coats bunching up. “Regret?” he asks her.

“Regret is expressing disappointment or guilt over something in the past. I don’t know what the word for it is in the present. Regret in context to you is like saying ‘I am going to invalidate everything we’ve ever done together.’ I’m not going to because I don’t regret it, Charlie. Up until last fall, I could trust you to tell me the things that made no sense to you and the things that needed to be reasoned out. Your love runs deep Charlie and I would expect nothing less than for you to rise up and protect the people you love and had loved. When saving Leona Lansing from herself trumped you telling me that you were drowning in your own regret, that’s when I knew things had changed for you. I understand you couldn’t come to me as a wife, I failed to understand when you couldn’t do it as a friend.”

They’ve slowed to a stop. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to you.”

She pats his arm. “I don’t want an apology Charlie.” 

“I want to offer it, at least.”

“I accept the fact you wanted to offer it.” She urges them to keep walking.

“I wasn’t looking for this. I knew that working for her was going to subject me to her world but I didn’t start working for her twenty years ago because I thought that there was this chance.”

“Your regret stems from the fact that the relationship you had together, that it had no resolution. Good or bad. In six weeks you could be throwing bottles of bourbon at each other, I mean I don’t know. I don’t know what you’ve done since you told me that you were together.”

“A lot,” he says softly. “There’s a sense of resuming where we left off, but...”

“Not so easy, is it?”

“Not at all,” he concedes.

“I’m not going to bore you with the entire ‘you deserve happiness’ speech. I will say that you deserve to see it through to the end, which is what you were ultimately denied. I also think that you both understand that neither one of you have much time to mess around trying to find that answer.”

They continue walking, admiring the signs of spring. He stops them both to point out a pair of red tailed hawks near Willow Cove. They even helped a young family walking by to see the same thing, Nancy showing the little boy and Charlie showing the little girl. Even if outside the park was no place to see such wildlife, in the park, there was still the opportunity to be awed. The mood is a bit lighter now as they continue around the Park, following a path they have before.

“What do you think will happen when the world finds out?” Nancy asks as they walk.

“I honestly don’t know,” Charlie responds. “I imagine it’s going to go as well as it went with Sophie.”

“I would be more than happy to make a statement on your behalf. That our relationship was well and truly done before…”

“No,” he says, cutting her off. “No, there’s a good chance we’re not going to go public even if we made it work.”

“She owns a media empire Charlie. This isn’t the days of FDR where the press was fine with not mentioning that the leader of the free word used a wheelchair. Somebody’s going to piece it together and it’s going to be internal before it’s external.”

“Nancy, you know that she and I… we made it exceptionally difficult to detail our past. She more so than I. I mean, people know we were reporters back in the day. That’s about it. One would be hard pressed to know more than that unless they had the key to Leona’s apartment. Her family and by extension her, have kept tight wraps on her activities in Cambodia and Vietnam for many reasons and to expose all of that would open up even more speculation about her and the company that is very much not needed. I mean, that’s just a part of it. The company, that’s as if she’s got a seventeen billion dollar albatross around her neck. She faces consequences from the Board of Directors and other shareholders who don’t have a particular fondness for me right now; our relationship would serve as a reason to remove her from her job. Not to mention Reese and Sophie. The sum of people that would understand why Leona Lansing would be in a relationship with me would equal you.”

She lets out a laugh. It’s not funny, really, it isn’t. The parallels were too painful to mention. Charlie and Leona were forced to hide their relationship forty years ago and would be forced to do so now. They couldn’t marry then and for all realistic intents and purposes wouldn’t be able to do so now. Then there is the fact that the both of them have an ex-spouse and each of them with a child with questionable parentage. Not to mention that the children in question may or may not be in some sort of relationship. There’s no doubt that all of them would be painted with the brush that they have the morals of guinea pigs. If there was ever a story to be blown out of complete and total context, it would be theirs. She sighs and wraps her arms around his arm that was dug into his pocket. “I’m sorry.”

He turns and smiles at her. “Don’t be, at least you understand the impossibilities that surround it.”

 

It’s later now and they find themselves at the Loeb Boathouse for lunch. Charlie has to plead a little before she agrees to a real lunch and not just a bite from the cafe. His charm is in full force and she even points it out to him. His only response is that he wants this to be a good day. She takes only one glance at the menu to see what he will order and takes ten minutes to decide what she will have.

They have fun with lunch, a light banter over a crab cake appetizer, while she enjoys a Manhattan and he a glass of Maker’s Mark to complement her. Filet Mignon Cob Salad for her, the gourmet hamburger for him. They share a piece of strawberry cheesecake. Charlie, in pure form, makes fun of the names they give everything. “Sour Cream Cheesecake prepared with Grand Mariner Macerated Strawberries. There are five too many words there.” 

“Yes, well, ‘Booze-Infused Strawberry Cheesecake’ probably wouldn’t sell as well.” She replies.

“I’d buy it.” He says simply.

As they leave the restaurant, Nancy sees the gondola on the lake. “Seems a little early in the season for boat rides, don’t you think?”

“Ah, well, the weather is good,” he comments. “Spring is here and soon the lake will have rowboats all over it. We’ve got to come this way,” Charlie tells her, pulling her by the hand.

“Wait. Why?” She pulls her hand away and stops.

“The next trip is ours.”

“Seriously?” she asks him. She stops and looks at him, her hands finding her hips.

“Well, yeah. I worked it out when you were in the bathroom.” He’s a few steps out of reach now, and he shrugs, his arms wide. “I figured you’d like it. You know, a boat ride where no one is shooting at us and the fact I failed to take a ride with you the last time we were in Venice.” 

Her lips make a fine line. “Charlie, what are you doing?” Nancy doesn’t want to question his motivation right now, but he’s making it difficult. 

“I told you earlier, I want it to be a good day.” He drops his hands to his sides.

“It has been a good day Charlie, really. I just don’t understand why you’re now working hard to keep it going. It’s gotten strange now,” she tells him.

“Can we talk about it on the boat?”

She can’t find it in her heart to protest and she agrees.

They had gotten in the boat and he pulls her to him, her back against his chest, his arms around her waist and they let the host guide the boat around the lake. He’s done this because he wants to talk to her and yet he doesn’t. Not having to look her in the eye, it gives him just enough permission to proceed with his thoughts. “I don’t want to lose you as a friend. You’ve known me at my absolute lowest and you’ve seen me during my highs. I have no one else in my life that I’ve spent as much time with in every sense of the word. I know you’ve told me that you’ll always be a friend. Be my friend. I want to believe that, I do. But I also recognize that you have every right to change your mind. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Our fates are as intertwined as ever. No matter what happens in the future, I want to look back and remember that we had one good day as just friends as we are now. You know, without deadlines and people attempting to kill us.”

She wraps her arms around his at her waist. “Yeah, okay.” She says after a moment. “Okay.”

 

After walking a considerable distance, talking about everything and nothing, they find themselves sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “She still wants to go to Afghanistan to write her book,” Nancy tells Charlie, as they watch a number of people go by, in front of them and around them to enter the museum proper. They aren’t the only couple on the stairs, but both of them would hazard to guess they were the oldest. 

“I wish- I wish she’d get someone to sponsor her like a news agency or a publishing house, someone to call when things go wrong.”

“Don’t you mean ‘if things go wrong’?”

“She’s our daughter so believe me when I say it’s a matter of when.” 

Nancy smiles and looks to the ground at that. “Well, she’s got three more months of graduate school. She might change her mind, or she might find a reason to stay.”

“I’m glad you came to your senses and decided not to go.”

“Not to go for now Charlie. I’m still going to go, but with selling the house and everything, the timing, not so good.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll take the blame for that.”

“Listen, don’t worry about it. It’ll all be over by Christmas. Besides, our lawyers love us. They’re just cashing a check and not having to negotiate us being in the same room. We’re not fighting over personal property. We’ll show up in court, sign the papers and be done in no time.”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Well, that’s why it takes a year. It gives everyone plenty of time to change minds.”

They’re comfortably quiet before Charlie speaks again. “Thank you.” He finally says.

“For what?” She asks.

“For everything,” He turns to her now and his face finds her cheek.

She knows the move and she lets him have it, a small kiss. When they’re done, she leans her forehead against his for a moment. “I’ll be your friend until the day we die Charlie, but I have to tell you that this, this part of things, it’s over. Forgive me for I tell you we can never go back to it, no matter what. I won’t be able to take you back intimately.”

“I know.”

After a moment, they’re back to watching the street when he sees a familiar SUV come to the curb and his phone rings. He stands and offers his arm to help Nancy stand as he answers the phone, acknowledging Matthew’s arrival. They bound down the few stairs and he ushers her into the back of the SUV. Instead of following her, he opens the front door instead, and retrieves a gift for her. Closing the front door, and leaning into the back seat. 

“These are for you,” he tells her. “I have to go into work for a bit, but Matthew will take you back to the driver to get you home. The papers are up front.” He passes to her a large bouquet of long stem yellow roses, wrapped in purple paper, tied with twine. He doesn’t wait for a response as he smiles a simple, albeit sad smile and closes the car door, tapping the roof indicating Matthew should go.

He watches the SUV disappear down street before he hails a cab for himself.

“Atlantis World Media building please.”

He needs a drink.


End file.
